When an investor affiliates with a new financial advisor, a take it or leave it mandatory arbitration clause is part of the contract. This means that investors must submit any disputes to arbitration run by the financial services industry self-regulating agency, FINRA.

In arbitration, investors and financial advisors and broker-dealers must submit to their dispute to a panel of arbitrators, a potentially expensive process that circumvents the traditional judicial system. Mandatory binding arbitration has been a sacred cow of the investor-financial advisor relationship for decades.

Until, perhaps, now. The Wall Street Journal reported that federal Securities and Exchange (SEC) Commission Luis Aguilar has called for an end to binding arbitration clauses. Aguilar cites the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which authorizes the SEC prohibit or restrict these types of agreements for broker-dealers and investment advisors.

I started writing about binding arbitration clauses in business to consumer contracts nearly 10 years ago and believe it’s an inherently unfair practice for consumers and investors. I don’t object to arbitration per se, when arbitration contracts are freely entered into by parties with equal power in a relationship, such as in business to business contracts.

But when they are forced on consumers and investors en mass and the consumers and investors have few if any choice but to accept mandatory binding arbitration clauses in a contract, they just aren’t fair. This country was founded with a judicial process meant to provide the maximum amount of fairness to all parties involved. It’s not perfect, but consumers and advisors deserve to have the ability to avail themselves of it to solve disputes.

Instead, investors and advisors are forced into what is essentially a private judicial process with it’s own opaque rules and procedures, where conflicts of interest on the part of arbitrators are difficult, if not impossible to determine and decisions aren’t fully explained and are incredibly difficult to appeal, regardless of the justice of the ultimate verdict.

So I’m with Commission Aguilar: end binding arbitration in investment advisor and broker-dealer to consumer contracts. Now.